Re: [gentoo-dev] Proliferation of IUSE=static-libs in Gentoo

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Mar 8, 2018 at 10:40 AM, Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:
>
> So, developers, please *stop adding USE=static-libs* to random libraries
> that have no reason whatever to be statically linked to. And by that I
> mean a good reason, not creeping featurism, not 'user asked for it', not
> 'this broken package hardcodes libfoo.a'.
>

While I agree with all the arguments against using static libs, this
seems a bit contrary to the spirit of Gentoo.  Certainly building
static libs shouldn't be the default.  However, if for some reason a
user feels they need static libs, do we really need to make them jump
through a million hoops simply because maybe we wouldn't do the same
thing in their shoes?

Why not just let maintainers add support if they wish, and neither
require them to do so nor prohibit or discourage them?

Now, if a package requires static linking that should be considered a
bug, except where it really does make sense (bootloaders, kernels,
firmware, etc).  If a package installs static libs by default this
should generally also be a bug.

IMO this is not a feature that causes harm simply by being available.
It isn't like a dialog box that has 500 boxes to hunt through.  This
is a global use flag that everybody understands, and which defaults to
off.  Keep in mind also that a lot of people use Gentoo in weird
niches, and flexibility is our main selling point.  Our users
shouldn't have to beg to have use cases supported if it is easy to
support them, just because their use cases are rare.  If we excluded
all rare use cases from Gentoo we'd probably exclude just about all of
them in practice, because if somebody just wanted Ubuntu or CentOS or
Debian they'd be using Ubuntu or CentOS or Debian.

Just my own two cents here.

-- 
Rich